Kantai Collection: Once Upon An Admiral
by DayDream Jedi
Summary: A series of short vignettes about the shipgirls having to deal with the strange and often comical admirals that the Navy brass keep foisting on them.
1. Neural Net

**Neural Net**

Nagato regarded the strange man in front of her who had been assigned to be the Naval District's Admiral. He was broad-shouldered and heavily muscled, said muscles straining against a uniform that was clearly one size too small, square-jawed, crew-cut and wearing a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses.

"Um, Admiral? I am battleship Nagato, welcome to the Naval District. I look forward to working with you… um, you are…?" Nagano saluted at first but faltered somewhat when all the Admiral did was turn to look at her.

"I am a Terminator," he said mechanically.

"You… what?" said Nagato, clearly confused. In addition to everything else, for some reason this Admiral had a very thick Austrian accent.

"I'm a Terminator, Cyberdyne Systems T-800 model 101."

"I… don't understand," said Nagato, feeling more and more that there was some kind of prank being played on her.

"I'm a cybernetic organism. Living human tissue over a metal combat endoskeleton, controlled by a neural net CPU, a learning computer. My mission," he said, as he got to his feet and Nagato had to admit that she was fairly impressed by the Admiral's height and build, "is to protect this Naval District and Terminate the Abyssal Fleet."

"Right. What are your orders, Admiral?" replied Nagato. At least this part of the conversation was something she understood. The Admiral pulled a sawed off shotgun from behind his desk, cocked it with a twirl and began to walk out of the office.

"Wait, Admiral! We need to determine the fleet composition!"

"I have already determined it," he looked back at her with that mechanical grace of his, "I have detailed files."

* * *

Later, Nagato and a fleet of five other ship girls were accompanying the Admiral on a sortie, the Admiral sailing in a motorboat.

"Abyssals detected to the north-west! There's twelve of them! We're outnumbered Admiral!" cried Akagi, who had been doing the scouting.

"They have not noticed us yet. We still have the advantage if you and Unryuu launch an aerial assault NOW," called back the Admiral, his voice strangely amplified, although maybe not so strangely, thought Nagato, given the Admiral's… unique nature.

The battle did go well at first, with the Admiral having an excellent sense of tactics. It was nice to not have to "break in" this new Admiral but Nagato supposed that made sense, although this whole cyborg thing still weirded her out just a bit. She had to wonder, just what exactly had he meant by living tissue over a metal skeleton? Was that literal?

"Admiral!" cried Unryuu. Nagato cursed herself for having lost concentration for a moment. An enemy I-class destroyer and Ri-class heavy cruiser had broken through their formation and where headed for the Admiral's boat. She began to aim her cannons but even before she fired, she knew that Abyssals would get off their shots before her. But then she saw the Admiral stand up, pulling a massive mini-gun up from the deck. He opened fire and the two poor Abyssals never knew what hit them. With the ship girls gazing at him in wide-eyed surprised, the Admiral raised the gun's barrel to his lips and blew away the smoke.

"Hasta la Vista, baby," he said.


	2. Tomcats

Every carrier in the room, gaped at the Admiral. Even Kaga. Nine Japanese CVs, 2 each of American and British, Graf Zeppelin, Aquila and Bearn. Eight light carriers and a few CVEs. Also a few others that carried planes, like Ise and Hyuuga and Hayasui.

"How much does it weigh?" said Akagi, shakily.

The Admiral was holding up a large poster of an F-14 Tomcat, roaring over the ocean, its home carrier a blurry shape on the far-away surface.

"The empty weight of the F-14 is 19,838 kg," said the Admiral.

"That's four times the weight of the Tenzan Model 12!" exclaimed Zuikaku.

"But that's just empty weight," said the Admiral, a wolfish grin on his face, "Typical loaded weight for Tomcat was 27,700 kg and its maximum takeoff weight is 33,720 kg."

"Thirty-three tons?!" exclaimed Ryuujou, mirroring the looks of incredulity on all present, "How tha' heck do they even get the thing off the deck?"

"You can do some amazing things with modern jet engines and a good catapult," said the Admiral, cannily.

A flood of talking began to pour forth, even from the American CVs Saratoga and Enterprise. Even Houshou was intensely interested.

"How fast can it fly?"

"How many guns does it have? What kind of bombs?"

"Seriously, how tha' heck do ya get it off the deck?"

"Admiral, I'd like to have even more excellent carrier planes like this."

"Uuuh, Kaga-san, we'd never be able to launch and land a plane like that."

"Mou, the Americans always get the best stuff! It's so unfair!"

"What kind of battles did it fight in?"

"Whoah, whoah, whoah!" cried the Admiral, waving his hands to get everyone's attention. He then walked over to a small cupboard and began to root around a rack of DVDs and BDs inside.

"How about I answer your questions by giving you more of a taste of the Tomcat than in a poster?" he said, grinning and holding up a disc case emblazoned with the words TOP GUN.


End file.
